The Conversazione. 



245 



THE CONVERSAZIONE 



was held at the Town Hall, at 8, p.m., the attendance numbering 

 eighty-eight, when The President continued the paper on the results 

 of his excavations, the first part of which he had read at the after- 

 noon Meeting. 



At its conclusion a cordial vote of thanks was passed, and the 

 audience for a short space devoted themselves to the refreshments 

 kindly provided by the Mayor, 



On the resumption of business the Rev. E. H. Goddard gave 

 an address on the Church Plate of North Wilts, illustrating the 

 subject by a large number of drawings, made by himself and others 

 as a basis for the history of the Church plate of the county which 

 it is hoped may shortly be published by Mr. J. E. Nightingale. 

 He was also able, through the kindness of many of the neighbouring 

 clergy, to exhibit a series of actual examples of the various designs 

 of chalices, patens, and flagons of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and 

 eighteenth centuries, including a very beautiful flagon of 1603 from 

 Heddington, Elizabethan chalices from the same parish and Hilperton, 

 a chalice of 1631 from Wootton Bassett, the flagons of St. John's and 

 St. Mary's, Devizes, and other specimens of the seventeenth and 

 eighteenth centuries from Clyffe Pypard, Calstone, Cherhill, &c» 



THURSDAY, JULY 31st. 



' The carriages left the Market Place at 9, a.m., with some sixty- 

 Members and their friends, for the first day's excursion. The route 

 lay by the Quaker's Walk, up the hill to Roundway Down and 

 Oliver's Camp, which it was explained had nothing to do with Oliver 

 Cromwell. The ramparts afforded the party one of the finest, 

 perhaps, on the whole, the finest, view in Wiltshire — the various 

 localities in the distance being pointed out by Mr. Medlicott, who 

 afterwards read a short but lucid account of the Battle of Roundway 

 Down, which had been prepared for the occasion by Mr. Walter 

 Buchanan. 



Mr. Cunnington and Mr. Bell then called attention to the 

 characteristic gullies which cut into the sides of the chalk escarpment 



